UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER SIR,—After your very fair review of the strike
situation in the previous week's Spectator was very disappointed by your leading article in this week's issue.
Surely the crux of the case lay in the Court's finding that : 'The nation has provided by statute that there shall be a nationalised system of railway transport, which must therefore be regarded as a public utility of the first importance.
'Having willed the end, the nation must will the means. This implies that employees of such a national service should receive a fair and adequate wage, and that, in broad terms, the railwayman should be in no worse case than his colleague in a comparable industry.
'The argument repeatedly used by the British Transport Commission, that they found them- selves unable to pay rates of wages which they might otherwise deem proper and desirable, is of course wholly inconsistent with such a view.'
The Court found 'a case for a critical re- examination of all wage rates,' but not under threat of a strike or under promise that some- thing must be conceded—a condition that has been honoured by the NUR.
During the post-war years the railways have lost far too many of their more promising young men due to the more attractive condi- tions in the outside world and, for the same reason, have failed to recruit staff for various essential grades such as locomotive cleaners (the footplate men of the future).
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